“You are short,” she finally said, hesitating in the doorway.
“Most humanish are short compared to Vynshàrau, ná Beyva.” Jani raised her right hand in a gesture of submission, an acceptance of fate.
“But as you change, you will grow taller?”
Jani’s gesture altered to something less submissive. “I have grown already.”
Beyva bared her teeth. “Such is a great thing, ná Kièrshia, and truly!”
Jani watched as Beyva brushed a large smudge of dirt from the front of her shirt. “Did you hurt yourself?”
Beyva looked at her. “Hurt? You did not hurt me, Kièrshia. You only pulled me.”
“Not then. Before, when you fell.”
“I did not fall, Kièrshia. I heard someone fall, but it was not me!” Beyva bounded down the stairs two at a time, hair flouncing, and disappeared around the bend before Jani could question her further.
“I can no longer step down stairs in such a way.” Nema disengaged himself from Jani’s grasp and walked out onto the landing. “My poor bones would shatter, and truly.” He pulled his coat more tightly about him. “It would not be so sad a thing, to leave this damned cold place.”
“I thought you liked Chicago.” Jani’s voice shook, although she tried to stop it.
“In the summer.” He started down the steps. “But this cold makes my bones ache, and gives me strange dreams.” He maintained his measured pace, his eyes focused on the downward trek. “Glories of the night to you, nìa.” He didn’t look back at her. His steady plod echoed within the stairwell as he descended out of sight.
“He is afraid.”
Jani spun around, her breath hissing through her teeth as her knee twisted. “What the hell are you still doing here!”
“I want to see what you look for. What makes you fear, as ní Tsecha fears.” Dathim leaned against the stairwell doorway in a slump-shouldered pose that would have made Lucien groan in his sleep. “Although his fears are as different, I believe. He fears that Cèel may indeed kill him. Cèel has his own fears. He fears the Oà, who have never ruled over idomeni. But now the Oà grow strong on Shèrá as the Vynshàrau spread themselves throughout the worldskein. He also fears Anais Ulanova, who lies.” He pushed off the entry and walked toward her. “But mostly he fears you, because he knows that if he kills Tsecha, you will do to him what you did to the Laumrau.”
Jani started down the stairs. “You should catch up with the others, or they will leave you behind.” If she had met Dathim on a colony, she would have admired his rebellious attitude, but this was Earth and his defiance threatened someone she cared for and at this moment she despised him.
“I can find my way back without them. I have walked the night city before.” Dathim quickened his step so he edged up beside her. “You have covered your eyes again.”
“Yes.”
“You are still ashamed.”
“Humanish do not like those who look too different. If I am to work in this city, if I am to help you, I must blend in as well as possible.”
“That is what ní Tsecha gave as his reasons for living in the embassy, for calling himself Haárin in name only. Work. Blending. Fear of upsetting. All excuses, to deny that which he was.” Dathim looked at her. “You do not like these words, ná Kièrshia. And because I speak them, you do not like me.” His voice sounded full and strong, as though he enjoyed the prospect.
“You have risked my teacher’s life,” Jani replied in High Vynshàrau, because she knew Dathim would understand both the words and the formality behind them, and that the decorum would irritate him. “Such is a concern to me, and truly.” She blew through the stairwell door and down the walkway behind the garage, looking for a skimmer that hadn’t been there when she had walked the place before, and not finding one. “Damn it!”
“You wait for your lieutenant?” Exhibitionist though he was, Dathim had sense enough to duck into a shadowed doorway.
“No.” Jani walked to the corner and looked around. No agitated Exterior Ministry Documents Chiefs to be seen, unfortunately. Someone fell and fell hard, and Beyva saw nothing. She rejoined Dathim, who still stood in the doorway. “I’m worried. The one I wait for is never late, and I don’t see her.” She eyed the doorways across the street and waited for Roni to stride out of one of them and berate her for being late. And waited….
Someone fell…
Jani backed away from the skimmer and rejoined Dathim on the sidewalk. He had taken a seat on a bench in front of a shuttered shop. Wise move on his part, whether he realized it or not. He looked much less distinctive sitting down.
“You have found nothing?” His voice held the barest hint of uncertainty.
Jani sat down beside him. “Nothing.”
Dathim leaned back and crossed his legs. “You will return to your home.”
“No.” Someone fell…on the second level, damn it! Jani bounded to her feet. “I need to go into the construction next door.”
Dathim made as though to rise. “I will go with you—”
“No.” Jani watched a couple walking hand-in-hand down the opposite sidewalk. They looked in her and Dathim’s direction, then turned to one another and fell into whispered argument. Jani could fill in the words without hearing them. Did you see—! Yes, I saw—! Do you think—? No, it can’t be. Yes, it can. No, it can’t!
Jani watched them disappear around the corner, still arguing and looking over their shoulders. “You’ve been spotted. You need to get out of here.” She stood. “How will you get back to the embassy?”
“There is a plumber near this place—the embassy purchases from her. She will take me.”
“Ask her to make a call for you.” Jani scrabbled through her pockets for a stylus and a scrap of paper, and wrote down Niall’s code. “She should say, ‘Come to the shooting gallery.’”
“Come. To. The. Shooting. Gallery.” Dathim nodded after each word. “And this humanish will come?” He studied Niall’s code before stashing it in his trouser pocket.
“I hope so.” Jani walked to the garage entry and searched the dark corners near the walls. “Ah-ha.” She bent and picked up another metal wedge. This one was larger, heavier, like a chock used to brace a wheeled vehicle. She hefted it, trying to gauge its balance. So intent was she on it that she didn’t notice Dathim had rejoined her until he took it from her hands.
“What is this?” he asked as he examined it.
Jani reached for the stop, but Dathim held it just beyond her grasp. “Damn it, give it to me!”
“Is it a charm?”
“No. It’s a weapon.” Jani tried once more to grab it, but Dathim backed away from her.
“This is not a weapon.” He wrinkled his nose. “A shooter is a weapon.”
“I can’t carry a shooter!”
“Why not?”
“Because I’m crazy, now give me back my chock!”
Dathim’s hand lowered slowly. “Crazy?”
Jani tapped the side of her head. “Most ill. In the head. If I’m caught carrying a weapon, I will have to live in a hospital until someone decides to let me out.”
“House arrest, like ní Tsecha.” Dathim looked at the chock again, then reached beneath his coat and unlatched something from his belt. “Here.” He pulled out an ax-hammer, and held it out to her handle-first. “This is not a weapon either, so even a crazy humanish can carry it.”
Jani hesitated, then gripped the ruthlessly elegant tool. So perfectly balanced was it that it felt weightless, even though it weighed several kilos. She swung it, and watched the hammerhead catch the light. “You carry this everywhere you go?”
Dathim nodded. “As I did during the war, when things that were not weapons were the only weapons to be had.” He looked up the quiet street, then down. “May you find she who you are meeting. May there not be blood. If there is, may it not be yours.” He trotted across the street, disappearing down an alley just as the curious couple reappeared around the corner, a friend in tow.
<
br /> Jani backed into the darkness of the garage entry and watched the trio point down the now-deserted street and argue. Then she slipped the ax-hammer through a belt loop and reentered the garage.
CHAPTER 30
A cluster of couples entered the garage as Jani crossed the floor, their laughter as rich as their clothing. They paid her no mind. She looked like staff in her coverall and boots, and their sort never paid attention to staff.
Jani slipped into the stairwell as the cluster stopped before the lift that would take them to the second floor. She ran up the stairs, her knee singing, and hurried along the wall toward the foamfill. She pushed against the foam as the chime from the ascending lift sounded from the adjacent wall. Enough spraylube remained to quench the surface-surface rubbing to a mouse-like squeak. She slipped behind the barrier and pushed it back into place just as she heard the lift doors open and the laughing voices sound.
She turned slowly, giving her eyes time to adjust to the dark. She exhaled through her mouth and watched her breath puff. The cold, half-lit garage was a haven compared to this clammy, dim place.
—goddamned shooting gallery—
Jani crept toward the vast interior. As she approached the entry, she looked up at the tier upon tier of scaffolds strung with safety illumins, like the balconies in a skeletal theater. She looked down at the floor, checking the dust for the ribbon trails that two heels would leave if the body they belonged to had been dragged. She stilled, straining for any sound.
I can stand right here until Niall shows up. Assuming he showed up at all. Even if he did, it wouldn’t change whatever had already happened to Roni, and it sure as hell wouldn’t prevent what could still happen in the next few minutes.
Jani removed the ax-hammer from her belt and held it against her leg so the safety illumins wouldn’t reflect off the metal and highlight her position. Then she stepped out into the dim, trying as best she could to hide behind the tool trolley.
“Jani.”
A voice Jani knew. A voice she hadn’t expected until she heard it. She wondered if Roni had felt the same. “Is that you, Peter?”
“Step out to the middle of the floor. I can’t see you very well.”
Jani slipped the ax-hammer behind her back to her left hand and plucked a short length of pipe from the top of the trolley with her right. “I’m coming.” She paced carefully, one foot in front of the other, a stride she knew made her look unsteady, tentative. “What are you doing here?”
“I could ask you the same question.” Peter Lescaux looked down on her from the second floor scaffold. He rested only his left hand on the rail, which meant he held a shooter in the right. Construction dust lightened his black evening suit to grey.
“I had a surprise encounter with some idomeni.” Jani smiled. Odds were good that he had seen Beyva when he subdued Roni and dragged her through the opening, so it would do no good to lie about it. “I’ve become a tourist attraction, someone they want to meet. I just saw a group of them off.”
“I saw you with one of them, looking at skimmers.” Lescaux pointed across the space, toward the tarpaulin-covered windows. “Through there. You looked worried, as if you waited for someone and they didn’t show.” He tugged at his jacket. “That was my problem. I should learn never to believe a lady when she says she’ll be right along.”
Jani kicked at the floor, raising a cloud of construction dust. “Messy place for an assignation, don’t you think?”
“Oh, I’ve used worse.” Lescaux shrugged. “Ani has informers staking out every mattress in the city. Pascal warned me she was the jealous type, but in the interest of career advancement, one does what one must.”
Jani felt augie dig his heels into her sides to prod her. Lescaux was trying to delay her, and augie whispered that she couldn’t afford to be delayed. “This is ridiculous, us talking like this. Why don’t you come down here?” She started across the floor. “Better yet, why don’t I come up there?”
“No!” Lescaux shifted from one foot to the other, still taking care to hide his right hand behind him. “You’ll get as dirty as I am.”
“What’s a little dirt?” Jani tossed the pipe aside so that it banged and rolled across the floor, so that Lescaux would think she was no longer armed. She scrambled up the ladder, taking advantage of the dark at the top to switch the ax-hammer back to her right hand. Her knee didn’t hurt at all now.
She legged over the safety rail and onto the scaffold platform. She had only taken a couple of steps when she saw Roni’s crumpled body laying near a smaller version of the main floor’s massive tool trolley. She could see the back of her head, the drying blood that matted and blackened her hair.
“I told you you’d get dirty.” Lescaux withdrew his right arm from behind his back. He indeed held a shooter.
Jani took a step toward Roni. “Is she still alive?”
“Not for much longer.” Lescaux raised the shooter to eye-level and sighted down. “I knew it was a mistake to show you that letter. But Derringer was so damned hot to turn you into his agent and grind you under his heel. He laughed about it on the way to pick you up. But I knew. I knew.”
Jani shifted her weight and edged another half-step forward. “You know a lot, Peter, I’m sure.”
“Stick your flattery up your ass!”
Jani shifted her weight again. A quarter-step, this time. “Lucien visited Guernsey. Lucien visited Anais. Whenever we read the name Le Blond, we thought of him.”
“Your mistake.” Lescaux grinned. “The one time I didn’t mind my predecessor getting the credit.” His hand tightened around the shooter, but not enough. If Lucien had stood in his place, he’d have shot her by now. “Stop.”
Jani halted in mid-step. “Roni must have made the leap, figured out that since you were on colonial assignment, you could have been Le Blond.” She hesitated, then made a leap of her own. “Did you plan my parents’ kidnapping?”
“Yes. Tried to. Damn that split-lipped bastard anyway.” Lescaux’s look chilled, but with his weak chin, it just made him look petulant.
Jani glanced at Roni, looking for any movement of the back or shoulder to indicate she breathed. As long as she breathed, however poorly, they had time. If she stopped, they had four minutes.
Roni lay still. So still.
Jani felt the head of the ax-hammer nudge her leg. She had to play this her way. Lescaux held a shooter, yes, but having the better weapon didn’t always confer the advantage. Lescaux needed the experience to go with it, and judging from the wild look in his eye, he didn’t have it. Niall, yes. Lucien, definitely. Me…yes. It took a certain brand of nerve to keep killing after the first blow had been struck, and Lescaux had already expended his initial burst on Roni. Now, he’d had time to think of all the complications, feel his mouth go dry as he watched them multiply beyond belief. How would he get rid of Roni’s body? Jani’s body? How would he clean up the trace evidence and could he do it before the morning construction crew arrived in a few hours and who could he use as an alibi and had anyone seen him enter the garage…?
My way. My speed. My call. Force his hand. Make him act. He was a changeling, not the real thing, and changelings always gave themselves away.
She took another step forward.
“I told you to stop!” Lescaux sighted down again. His hand shook just enough.
Jani brought the ax-hammer around and hurtled forward. The shooter cracked—the pulse packet struck her left side and sent her spinning into the trolley. The edge of the up-ended lid caught her alongside the head. A corner of the case punched her square in her left ribs. She tumbled to the scaffold floor as tool trays flipped into the air, fell across her body, her head. Tools clattered and rolled, tumbling over the side to the main floor two stories below.
Jani lay atop a pile of fasteners and cutter blades. The edges and points razored through her coverall into the skin beneath. Her limbs twitched and her heart skipped beats as the energy from the shot dissipated throughout her body.
Then augie placed his hand over her heart. Her scattered thoughts collected. The pain in her ribs faded. She lay still, still as death. A cold metal tray had fallen across her head and pressed atop the side of her face. The ax-hammer remained looped to her right wrist—she tried to close her fingers around the handle, but they refused to obey. Once more she squeezed. One finger tightened. Another.
The footsteps approached, as Jani knew they would. Stopped at her feet. She lay twisted, her chest facing the floor, her head close to the wall, covered by metal. If Lescaux just wanted to make sure she was dead, he could administer the coup de grace to the heart. If he wanted to eliminate all hope of revival, he would have to shoot her in the head.
If he wants to shoot me in the heart, he’ll have to turn me over. If he wants to shoot me in the head, he’ll have to move the tray. If Lescaux decided on the heart shot, he’d have to touch her. He won’t. He can’t. She held her breath as he stepped closer to the wall to push away the tray and take the head shot. Lucien would use a stick to move the tray. He wouldn’t risk getting too close. But Lescaux wasn’t Lucien.
Just as Jani felt the pressure of the tray lessen, she pushed up and twisted around, swinging the ax-hammer in an upward arc. The blade end caught Lescaux in the jaw—blood sprayed as he stumbled back.
Jani struggled to her feet. Her ribs squeezed her left side with every breath. Her left leg shuddered, and she stumbled. She tried to raise her left arm for balance, but it seemed glued to her side.
Lescaux raised his shooter once more. Jani thought he smiled, at first, until she saw that her blow had hacked and torn his lower lip and chin so that the skin hung down, revealing his bottom teeth. His jaw looked skewed. Blood spattered his crooked face and soaked the front of his dinner jacket. He stood in front of the railing, placed his free hand on it to steady himself, and sighted.
Law of Survival Page 36